That the Brazilian people have a reputation for being a happy people, everyone already knew. Now what you probably didn't know is that the Portuguese language was considered by expert scientists as one of the happiest languages in the world! Want to know why? O kids school will explain this story to you properly!
The research was done in the United States by a team of researchers from the University of Vermont. These researchers collected 100,000 words from ten different languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian and Arabic. The words were not chosen at random: the scientists selected, in each language, the ten thousand words most used by the speakers and they asked the natives of each of the languages to rate each word (a short list of them) in a kind of “scale of the happiness".
Ten thousand words of each language were selected, and each speaker should evaluate the list of words received
After more than five million evaluations, scientists have come to the conclusion that every word in our language is capable of provoke different reactions and sensations, and the words of the Portuguese language are able to stimulate an inclination in the speakers positive! In practice, this is very easy to prove, because when we are the target of flattering words, our behavior changes towards people and the world. When we hear pleasant words, because they are loud or even funny, chemical transformations interesting things happen, which makes these “smiling words” music for the ears!
At the top of the list was Spanish, followed by Portuguese and English. There in the lantern, in the worst position on the list, was Chinese, rated as the language that registers the lowest inclination for positive words! The study by researchers at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Vermont proved something that common sense already knew: there is an intimate relationship between words and a good or bad mood. Fortunately, scientists were able to observe that human beings, despite facing so many difficulties in their daily lives, tend to use more positive words than negative ones, isn't that cool?
Did you see? Portuguese is a happy language!
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
